Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, Discover, and others. She was a correspondent for NPR's Radiolab and PBS's Nova ScienceNOW and co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011.

Her full name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists referred to her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, but her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of medicine's most important tools: the first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, despite the fact that she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were critical in the development of the polio vaccine, unearthed secrets about cancer, viruses, and the consequences of the atomic bomb, aided in major developments such as in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping, and have been bought and sold in the billions.

Henrietta Lacks, on the other hand, is virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked cemetery.

Henrietta's family learned of her "immortality" more than two decades after her death, when scientists studying HeLa began utilizing her husband and children in research without their informed consent. And, despite the fact that the cells established a multimillion-dollar industry selling human biological materials, her family never saw any of the proceeds. As Rebecca Skloot expertly demonstrates, the Lacks family's history, both past and present, is intricately linked to the horrific history of experimentation on African Americans, the development of bioethics, and legal conflicts over whether we have control over the stuff we are made of.

Rebecca became involved in the life of the Lacks family, particularly Henrietta's daughter Deborah, throughout the decade it took to uncover this narrative. Deborah was plagued by doubts: had scientists cloned her mother? Had they murdered her in order to harvest her cells? And, if her mother was so significant in medicine, how come her children couldn't afford health insurance?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences. It is intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down.

Author: Rebecca Skloot

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 16585 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #662 in Books

#1 in Medical Research (Books)

#1 in History of Medicine (Books)

#1 in Cell Biology (Books)

What really is life? What makes bees dance? How do animals recognize their mothers? Who invented germs? Discover the living world, how it interacts with its surroundings, and be amazed by the most fascinating biology facts, theories, and discoveries.

Among the best books on biology, The Biology Book is written in easy English, making complicated biological concepts understandable to anyone! You'll find these pages entertaining and educational whether you're a student or a layperson because it:

• Uses creative font, visuals, and accessible text to investigate the most renowned and important ideas in biology, as well as the people who created them.
• Contains a directory area for simple localization.
• Profiles more than 95 ideas and events critical to the advancement of biology and the life sciences, with thought-provoking graphics throughout that demystify the central concepts underlying each idea
• Includes insightful and inspiring quotes from leading biologists and scientists, including 2020 Nobel Laureates Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, as well as thinkers from other fields

Author: DK

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explained-ebook/dp/B091KSJRDT/

Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (from 131 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #2,862 in Kindle Store

#1 in Anatomy Science

#2 in Biology (Kindle Store)

#2 in History of Science & Medicine

Torsten Engelbrecht is a Hamburg-based investigative journalist. He won the Alternative Media Award in 2009 for his essay "The Amalgam Controversy." Dr. Claus Köhnlein, MD, is an internal medicine specialist. He finished his residency at the University of Kiel's Oncology Department. Dr. Samantha Bailey, MD, is a New Zealand research physician. In 2005, she received her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Otago University. Dr. Stefano Scoglio, BSc PhD, is a microbiology and naturopathy expert.

Reports of COVID-19, measles, swine flu, SARS, BSE, AIDS, or polio have horrified the public. The authors of "Virus Mania," investigative journalist Torsten Engelbrecht, Dr. Claus Köhnlein, MD, Dr. Samantha Bailey, MD, and Dr. Stefano Scoglio, BSc PhD, demonstrate that this fearmongering is unfounded and that virus mayhem ignores basic scientific facts: the existence, pathogenicity, and lethal effects of these agents have never been proven.

The book "Virus Mania" will also discuss how modern medicine employs dubious indirect lab tools that seem to show the existence of viruses, such as antibody testing and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The reported viruses could, in reality, be viewed as particles created by the cells themselves as a result of stress factors such as medications. These particles are then "picked up" by antibody and PCR testing and misidentified as virus-causing agents.

Pharmaceuticals, lifestyle medications, pesticides, heavy metals, pollution, starvation, and stress are among the real causes of the illnesses known as COVID-19, avian flu, AIDS, or Spanish flu, according to the authors. To back it up, the writers quote dozens of well-known scientists, including Nobel laureates Kary Mullis, Barbara McClintock, Walter Gilbert, and Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, as well as microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize winner René Dubos, and provide over 1,400 credible scientific references.

The topic of "Virus Mania" is extremely important. Drug companies and prominent scientists make fortunes, while the media enhances its audience ratings and circulations with sensationalized reportage (the coverage of the "New York Times" and "Der Spiegel" are specifically analyzed). Enlightenment regarding the genuine causes and true requirements for illness prevention and cure is fading.

Author: Torsten Engelbrecht, Dr. Claus Köhnlein, Dr. Samantha Bailey and Dr. Stefano Scoglio

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/3752629789/

Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 538 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,200 in Books

#1 in Hepatitis (Books)

#2 in Microbiology (Books)

#4 in Commerce (Books)

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments in Psychiatry and Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She is an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and won a National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award for her revolutionary study on emotion in the brain.

Emotional science is undergoing a revolution comparable to the discoveries of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist and neuroscientist, is leading the effort, and her study challenges the long-held belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in distinct brain regions. Barrett demonstrates that we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interaction of brain, body, and society. How Emotions Are Made, a clear report from the cutting edge of emotion science, reveals the profound real-world implications of this breakthrough for everything from neuroscience and medicine to the legal system and even national security, laying bare the enormous implications of our latest and most intimate scientific revolution.

Author: Lisa Feldman Barrett

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret-ebook/dp/B00QPHURT6/ref=zg_bs_226688_6/144-6898514-8149833?pd_rd_i=B00QPHURT6&psc=1

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 2525 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #3,105 in Kindle Store

#1 in Neuroscience (Kindle Store)

#2 in Medical Neuropsychology

#3 in Neuropsychology (Kindle Store)

Philipp Dettmer is the founder and lead writer of Kurzgesagt, which has over fourteen million followers and one billion views on YouTube.

You awaken with a tickling in your throat. It hurts in your head. You're irritated as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work. Meanwhile, an enormous battle is raging just beneath your skin. Millions of people are fighting and dying so that you can whine as you walk out the door.

But most of us seldom pause to consider: What exactly is our immune system?

It is one of the oldest and most important aspects of life on Earth, second only to the human brain in complexity. You'd die in a matter of days if you didn't have it. Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind YouTube's most popular science channel, takes readers on a journey through the human body's fortress and defenses in Immune. Within us lies a never-ending conflict of epic proportions, full of tales of invasion, strategy, defeat, and great self-sacrifice. In fact, as you were reading this, your immune system most likely recognized and eliminated a cancer cell that had begun to grow in your body.

Each chapter delves into a different aspect of the immune system, including defenses like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like bacteria, allergies, and cancer, as Dettmer explains why boosting your immune system is a myth, how parasites sneak past your body's defenses, how viruses work, and what happens in your wounds when you cut yourself.

Immune, enlivened by captivating full-color pictures and engrossing narration, transforms immunology, one of the most convoluted, linked, and perplexing topics, into a compelling trip through an amazing alien planet. Immune is a necessary and surprisingly entertaining crash course in what is arguably and increasingly the most important system in the body.

Author: Philipp Dettmer

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Immune-Journey-Mysterious-System-Keeps/dp/0593241312/

Ratings: 4.9 out of 5 stars (from 5270 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,775 in Books

#3 in Immunology (Books)

#3 in Immune Systems (Books)

#6 in Anatomy (Books)

Anna Lembke is the Stanford Addiction Medicine medical director, program director for the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and leader of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.

This is a book on pleasure. It's also about suffering. Most importantly, it's about how to strike a delicate balance between the two, and why finding that balance is more crucial than ever. We live in a period when there is unparalleled access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, giving digital dopamine 24 hours a day, seven days a week to a wired generation. As a result, we've all become prey to obsessive overconsumption.

Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and author, discusses the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the obsessive pursuit of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it in Dopamine Nation. Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and togetherness entails keeping dopamine in check by condensing sophisticated neuroscience into simple metaphors. Her narrative is held together by the lived experiences of her patients. Their compelling stories of adversity and redemption give us all hope for better regulating our consumption and changing our lives. Dopamine Nation essentially demonstrates that the key to attaining balance is to combine the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery. The book is among the best books on biology.

Author: Dr. Anna Lembke

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Dopamine-Nation-Finding-Balance-Indulgence/dp/152474672X/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 2580 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,865 in Books

#3 in Sociological Study of Medicine

#4 in Medical Clinical Psychology

#9 in Biology (Books)

Emeran Mayer, MD, has spent the last four decades researching brain-body relationships. He is the executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as the codirector of the Digestive Diseases Research Center.

Cutting-edge neuroscience is combined with the most recent findings on the human microbiome to inform this practical guide, which establishes once and for all the inextricable biological relationship between mind and body.

We've all felt the connection between our head and our gut—the decision we made because it "felt right;" butterflies in our stomach before a big meeting; worried stomach rumbling when we're stressed. While ancient healing traditions such as Aryuvedic and Chinese medicine have recognized the dialogue between the gut and the brain, Western medicine has failed to appreciate the complexity of how the brain, gut, and, more recently, the microbiome—the microorganisms that live inside us—communicate with one another. Dr. Emeran Mayer, Executive Director of the UCLA Center for Neurobiology of Stress, presents a revolutionary look at this new science in The Mind-Gut Connection, teaching us how to harness the power of the mind-gut connection to take responsibility of our health.

The Mind-Gut Connection demonstrates how to keep brain-gut connection open and balanced in order to:

• Focus on a plant-based diet to heal the gut.
• Maintain a healthy microbiota by eating fermented foods and probiotics, fasting, and avoiding sweets and processed foods.
• Encourage weight loss by cleansing and promoting healthy digestion and nutrient absorption.
• Improve immunity and delay the onset of neurological illnesses including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's
• Improve your mood and lessen fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, and depression.
• Prevent and cure GI problems like leaky gut syndrome, food sensitivities and allergies, IBS, and digestive discomfort like heartburn and bloating.
• And a lot more.

Author: Emeran Mayer

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Gut-Connection-Conversation-Impacts-Choices-ebook/dp/B075JDWB8R/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 2054 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #5,082 in Kindle Store

#1 in Cognitive Neuroscience & Cognitive Neuropsychology

#1 in Medical Physiological Aspects of Psychology

#1 in Physiological Aspects in Psychology (Kindle Store)

Merlin Sheldrake is a writer and a biologist. He earned a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from the University of Cambridge for his studies on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute predoctoral research fellow. He is a musician as well as an avid brewer. Entangled Life, one of the best books on biology, is his debut novel.

When most people think of fungi, they think of mushrooms. However, mushrooms are merely fruiting bodies, similar to apples on a tree. Most fungi live in the shadows, but they comprise a vastly diversified kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains practically all living systems. Fungi hold the key to comprehending our planet and the ways humans think, feel, and conduct.

The bright young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world through the eyes of fungi in Entangled Life, delivering a thrilling change of viewpoint. Sheldrake's vivid investigation takes us from yeast to psychedelics, from fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that connect plants in complex networks known as the "Wood Wide Web," to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.

Fungi call into doubt our notions of identity and even intelligence. They are metabolic masters, earth builders, and essential players in the majority of life's processes. They have the power to modify our thinking, heal our bodies, and even help us recover from environmental disasters. Sheldrake demonstrates how these amazing organisms—and our interactions with them—are transforming our knowledge of how life works by exploring fungus on their own terms.

Author: Merlin Sheldrake

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Entangled-Life-Worlds-Change-Futures/dp/052551032X/

Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (from 5673 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #2,555 in Books

#3 in Mushrooms in Biological Sciences

#8 in Ecology (Books)

#13 in Biology (Books)

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and the author of thirty-one acclaimed nonfiction books for adults and children, including The Hummingbirds' Gift, the National Book Award finalist The Soul of an Octopus, and the New York Times bestseller The Good Good Pig.

Popular biologist Sy Montgomery has practiced genuine immersion journalism in search of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus. She has befriended octopuses with a wide range of characteristics, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico—gentle Athena, aggressive Octavia, inquiring Kali, and cheerful Karma. Each creature demonstrates her cunning in a variety of ways, including fleeing enclosures like an orangutan, shooting water to bounce balls, and endlessly fooling partners with various "sleights of hand" to gain food.

Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimps, but they are now studying octopuses to interpret the meaning of the animal's color-changing tactics. Montgomery traces the growing admiration for this mollusc while telling a unique love tale with her "joyful devotion for these brilliant and fascinating creatures" (Library Journal Editors' Spring Pick). The Soul of an Octopus is a hilarious, fascinating, emotional, and insightful look at what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different brains.

Author: Sy Montgomery

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Octopus-Surprising-Exploration-Consciousness/dp/1451697724/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 5494 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #2,589 in Books

#1 in Marine Life

#1 in Invertebrates Zoology

#1 in Marine Biology (Books)

Gary H. Lincoff, the author, is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden and served as president of the North American Mycological Association from 1980 to 1986.

From the go-to reference source for over 18 million nature enthusiasts comes the most complete field guide to North American mushrooms available—a must-have for every enthusiast's day pack or home library.

This interesting book is regarded as one of the best books on biology everyone should read. The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, with its durable vinyl bound and over 700 full-color identification images grouped visually by color and shape, is the ideal companion for any mushroom hunting adventure. Each species has a full physical description, information on edibility, season, habitat, range, look-alikes, alternative names, edible and dangerous species, uses, and folklore. A section on cooking and eating wild mushrooms, as well as graphics identifying mushroom sections, complete out this indispensable guide.

Author: Gary Lincoff

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-Society-American-Mushrooms/dp/0394519922/

Ratings: 4.8 out of 5 stars (from 4883 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #2,600 in Books

#1 in Biology of Butterflies

#4 in Mushrooms in Biological Sciences

#5 in Botany (Books)